Autumn Bones

get to know him. Then I think . . . ew, but it’s Skeletor.” She glanced guiltily in my direction. “I’m not proud of that, but I can’t help the way I feel.”

“I get it,” I said. “But it’s probably way past time to let that old high school shit go, you know?”

“I know, I know!” Jen sighed. “But if it were that easy, they wouldn’t make movies about it.”

“True words, Romy. Or were you Michele?” It’s not like I was one to talk, although I was pretty sure Stacey Brooks had earned a lifetime exception to the “grow up and get over it” clause.

She smiled. “Can you imagine the two of us turning up at our ten-year class reunion on Lee’s arms?”

“I can imagine worse things.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Jen’s smile faded. “Listen, if Lee ever does ask me out, I’ll think about it, I really will. But it’s not just the Skeletor thing. He’s got this weird paranoid, secretive streak, you know?”

“It’s not paranoia if they’re out to get you.” I dodged the halfhearted smack Jen aimed at my arm. “Okay, seriously! I don’t know about that whole corporate espionage thing—maybe it’s true, maybe it’s not. But remember, Lee’s got his own high school damage. I think he’s been burned a lot of times and it’s hard for him to trust people. He was so sure I was trying to trick him when we visited Little Niflheim, and I was nice to him back in the day.”

“Point taken.” Jen cocked her head at me. “Um, speaking of secretive, Miss Johanssen . . . ?”

“What?” I flushed. Jen folded her arms. “Okay, look . . .” I glanced around, half hoping for a timely manifestation. Unfortunately, the scene in the park was the very picture of a charming small-town harvest festival. If it weren’t for Sheila Reston’s neck tattoo, it could have been a Norman Rockwell painting. Since everything was quiet on the Western Front, maybe it was finally time for me to spill the beans. “It’s complicated.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

“Remember the day the Tall Man’s remains went missing?” I said in a low voice. “Well, Cody and I sort of hooked up that morning.”

“Sort of?”

“Sort of as in totally,” I admitted. “And one other time. After the ghost uprising at the old hospital.”

“Wow.” Jen let out a long breath. “How was it?”

“Intense.” I shivered, my tail twitching involuntarily. “Especially the first time. He was still a little . . . wolfy.” There was a look on Jen’s face I couldn’t quite decipher, a look that said she was suddenly seeing me as a someone unfamiliar. “Look, don’t say anything to anyone about it, okay?”

The look turned to indignation. “Duh. So?”

“So . . . nothing,” I said ruefully. “I mean, we’re still not the same freakin’ species. Like I said—”

“It’s complicated,” Jen finished. “So that’s it?”

“Not exactly.” I looked around again to confirm that no one was in earshot. “Yesterday, Stefan kissed me.”

Her eyes widened. “No shit! The hot ghoul?”

“Uh-huh.”

She glanced toward Rafe, sitting motionless on his motorcycle. “Is that him up there now?”

“No,” I said. “That’s one of his lieutenants.”

“Okay.” Her gaze returned to me. “So?”

“I don’t know, Jen,” I said honestly. “Any of it. I don’t know what to think about or even how to think about it, let alone talk about it. Any of it. All of it. Either of them.” My tail began lashing with the pent-up agitation I’d been suppressing for days. “And I feel like with Halloween barreling down on us and Grandpa Morgan’s duppy out there, I’ve barely had time to breathe—”

Across the park, a beer keg blew a gasket and my mom sent an inquiring look in my direction. “Whoa, whoa!” Jen grabbed my arms. “Daise, chill.”

With an effort, I chilled. “Sorry.”

“No, my bad.” She let go of me. “I shouldn’t have pushed you.”

“It’s okay.” I gave my mother an apologetic wave. She nodded and returned to duct-taping down plastic sheeting on the table for the pie-eating contest. Up on the rise at the other end, Rafe was pointing at me, his helmeted head cocked in a questioning manner. Great, so he’d felt it, too. When I waved him off, he settled back into a watchful pose astride his bike.

Jen glanced toward him again. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Stefan’s lieutenant keeping his distance. You’d think he’d want to get his ghoul on in a place where everyone’s happy and having fun. I mean, I know they’re not supposed to feed on the unwilling unless it’s an emergency,” she added quickly. “But as long as he’s here doing panic control, you’d think he’d want to skim a little of the good stuff off the top. I would.”

“Cooper says it’s painful,” I murmured. “Happiness, that is.”

“Who’s Cooper?”

I gave Jen a sharp look, but the question was genuine. In the weeks that I’d gotten to know Cooper, I hadn’t mentioned him to her. It made me realize how much distance my role as Hel’s liaison was creating between me and my best friend. “He’s Stefan’s other lieutenant.”

“Oh.” Judging from that one syllable, she was realizing it, too.

“Hey.” I shifted the spirit lantern in my left arm, grabbed Jen’s hand, and squeezed it. “I’m sorry if I’ve been secretive. I don’t mean to be, it’s just that I’ve had a lot going on. And I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to help out with this from the get-go, but I’m really glad you’re here now. Okay?”

“Okay.” Jen squeezed my hand back.

On the street alongside the park, Sinclair’s red, yellow, and green bus pulled up to let passengers disembark, PEMKOWET SUPERNATURAL TOURS painted on its side. I couldn’t help but gaze wistfully at it. I’d liked Sinclair. Well, I still did, of course, but life would have been a lot different if things had worked out between us. “Does he ever talk about me?” I asked Jen. “Now that you’re housemates?”

She followed my gaze. “A little, sure. I mean, he knows we’re friends, obviously. I think Sinclair feels bad about what happened. Aside from his familial baggage, which is a fairly huge deal breaker at the moment, he’s a sweetheart.” She paused. “Do you think you made a mistake breaking up with him?”

“No,” I said. “But I wish I did.”

Jen nodded. “I don’t blame you.”

A little before three o’clock, the harvest festival began winding down and young kids and their parents began to assemble across the street for the children’s parade. Not a single ghost had manifested and not a single hammer had been drawn. I was glad, but it didn’t do anything to alleviate the uneasiness I felt in the marrow of my bones.

“You be careful out there tonight, Daisy baby,” my mom said to me, hugging me in farewell. “And you, too, honey,” she added to Jen.

“We will, Mom Jo,” Jen assured her.

Jen and I followed the parade on foot down the main street of downtown Pemkowet, which was easy enough to do since the array of pint-size lions, witches, skeletons, zombies, and princesses moved at a snail’s pace. Ken Levitt brought up the rear in a squad car, creeping behind the procession.

At the end of the parade route, parents and children gathered on the municipal basketball court, where folding chairs on loan from the Women’s Club had been set up, and Mrs. Brophy from the library read an abridged version of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” in a loud, theatrical voice.

Even though I knew what was coming, it was effective. There was a paved footpath that led up the hill alongside the basketball court, and when Mrs. Brophy got to the story’s climax, the Headless Horseman himself came clattering down the footpath astride a coal-black horse, looking about seven feet tall in the saddle thanks to the long, dramatic cape obscuring his entire head and torso. Children shrieked, local parents cheered—it was an annual event, and the guy who played the Horseman had a riding stable a few miles outside of town—and adult tourists shouted in excitement and reached for their cameras and phones, many of them believing it was a real apparition. Like I said, it was a badass costume.

The Headless Horseman drew rein long enough to hurl a jack-o’-lantern onto the court, smashing it against the cement, before whirling and trotting briskly back up the footpath.

Once he’d vanished, the mood broke and the crowd began to scatter, sheepish tourists putting away their cameras, realizing it had all been part of the act. Rafe, who’d circled around town to position himself across the